


Put Your Blue Jeans Back On, Girl (Go Home)

by novel_concept26



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-21
Updated: 2011-09-21
Packaged: 2017-11-06 15:36:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/420466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novel_concept26/pseuds/novel_concept26
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rachel thinks she can just tramp right in here and coax her back. Rachel doesn’t get it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Put Your Blue Jeans Back On, Girl (Go Home)

Title: Put Your Blue Jeans Back On, Girl (Go Home)  
Pairing: Quinn Fabray/Rachel Berry, Quinn-centric  
Rating: PG  
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profit gained.  
Spoilers: Through Purple Piano Project.  
Summary: Rachel thinks she can just tramp right in here and coax her back. Rachel doesn’t get it.  
A/N: Title from Ferras’ “Hollywood’s Not America.” Because it is basically Quinn's character anthem.

Rachel comes storming into her little bubble on the second day of school, and honestly, why is Quinn even a little bit surprised? Rachel has been storming in and out since day one, since deciding to go after Quinn’s boyfriend, since deciding to out Quinn’s biggest secret, since deciding Quinn was the one thread on her blanket she just can’t leave be. It’s like the only thing Rachel Berry knows _how_ to do is storm into Quinn’s world, light a match, and dance on the ashes.

Except Rachel thinks she’s helping, so there’s that.

It takes every ounce of strength not to grab the smaller girl and shake the life out of her beneath those bleachers. She’s supposed to look—not look, _be_ —cool, so she doesn’t take a single step in Rachel’s direction, but it goes against instincts long honed. Quinn finds herself biting the inside of her cheek as she resists, ignoring the knowing, sidelong looks her new friends keep firing her way. This is her curse, it seems; no matter where on the totem pole her friends fall, they always, _always_ feel the need to butt into her business.

She’ll have to chain smoke like the devil to keep from talking about it when they drill her later. She resigns herself to an evening spent hacking into a pillow, because, hey, maybe she hasn’t gotten completely used to the whole smoking bit yet. Whatever. It’s not something she can drop, not around _these_ girls.

And, thanks to her own stupid self, these girls are all she’s got right now.

Rachel comes in and bats her big puppy eyes, long lashes licking against strong cheekbones, looking as much like a child as ever in her schoolgirl sweater. Rachel comes in with her “I’m sad not seeing you” and “we’re a family” and “ _this is our year_ ,” and Quinn wants to scream as that damn original song from last year comes circling through her head on repeat, the way it’s been all summer long. _Get it right._ That’s never been her key, exactly, and damn Rachel for reminding her.

Rachel smiles up at her with no hesitation, no regard for her own sanity (which _must_ be on the line, for that tiny, tiny girl, the laughingstock of the school, to actively come _looking_ for someone who has thrown in with the Skanks). Rachel says she’ll be there when Quinn is ready to come back. Like there’s no question, no pressure. Quinn wonders how she’s survived this long, being that naïve. It’s almost sweet.

Almost.

There are so many almosts where Rachel is concerned.

She slumps from the school when the day is out, habitually flicking her lighter open only to slam it shut again. Her legs lead her away from home because, be honest, what’s homey about it anymore? She had a baby. She wrecked lives. She cut off her hair and dyed it the color of cotton-candy rebellion and she is _not_ going back. There is no such option. She’d be just as dumb as Rachel if she thought otherwise. The Fabray residence is just a place to sleep until…

What? She steals enough twenties out of Judy’s wallet to book a plane ticket? And then where is she supposed to go? Who would be stupid enough to take her in?

_Rachel._

It’s weak to go there. It’s unbearably, intolerably sad to even consider it, but there she goes again, closing her eyes and seeing Rachel’s all over again. Every day, every night, she weighs the pros and cons, and every single time, she comes to the same conclusion. It’s stupid, and she can’t be that person, the one who trots back to the same drawing board and expects a change. Changes don’t come out of thin air.

Hell, she’s seventeen and on her third carefully-wrought identity. Nobody knows the merits of change better than Quinn.

Rachel’s not ever going to be a change. Rachel wants what she’s wanted since preschool. Rachel lets herself flow from Finn to the stage and back again, over and over, flickering like the end of one of Quinn’s cigarettes, but always refusing to burn out. Rachel’s determination, her ambition, her steady faith in herself has always been…Rachel. Quinn doesn’t know how she does it, but she admires her. She’ll never say it to Rachel’s face, but the girl has got down what Quinn herself just can’t seem to pin, and that’s worth something.

But just because she’s got it, does that mean a damn thing? It’s not like she can pass the secret of the universe along to Quinn and make everything okay again. Quinn has been through the ringer so many times, she’s not sure what her old self even looks like anymore—or if that person _could_ exist in this new body. It’s pretty damn hard, making that look okay again.

She hates herself for winding up on the edge of Rachel’s block, staring past lines of trees and sedans at the house a third of the way down. She’s been inside that house. Weird circumstances, maybe; a blowout that practically left her with alcohol poisoning, a writing session that nearly unbalanced her self-control in the worst way. That house has nothing but memories of repression, but hey—doesn’t everywhere in this town? Even now, with her new piercing and her tattoo and her slowly-blackening lungs, she’s still holding back.

Where Rachel’s concerned, she will _always_ be holding back.

And what if she didn’t? What would be the result of that? Walking up to that house she spends so much time gawking at, throwing her shoulders back, banging on the door. Asking Rachel to dinner. Apologizing for everything. _Explaining_ everything. What would even happen?

She knows. Just like Santana knows, just like Kurt knew, there will be consequences of admitting the worst. There are always consequences, and in a town like this, an admission like that is just as good as handing the student body a rope and asking to be strung up. It’s sad, but she’s not stupid enough to believe otherwise.

It’s why Santana hasn’t asked Brittany out yet, or told her parents, or even spoken to Quinn of it outright. Her lip curls, playing back her best friend’s raging excuses, recalling every too-detailed tale of slipping between the sheets of some football bonehead’s bed. Santana’s pathetic, but at least she’s smart.

Kurt’s not quite so brilliant, but she thinks it might be easier for him, somehow. Sure, he’s had his life threatened (and she can’t _begin_ to imagine how she would deal with that one), but he’s strong. He burns brighter than everyone in this crappy cow town, and he knows it. If she had half his strength, maybe she wouldn’t be standing here now, flicking the Zippo clenched in her fist, glaring at the Berry residence. Maybe. She doesn’t exactly know the meaning of strength anymore, so who’s to say?

She can’t tell Rachel, because she can’t tell _anyone_. Because when she slips up and tells Santana she’s not interested in boys, she spends the rest of the day looking over her shoulder, waiting for the first bullet. Because when Mac stands up to “defend” her, every hackle goes up, terrified of that _stupid_ girl letting slip their little tryst from last month. Because this is Lima, and in Lima, ordinary marks survival.

Rachel’s not the person to burden with feelings she didn’t ask to feel in the first place. Rachel is happy for maybe the first time ever—and don’t think Quinn doesn’t see the common denominator in that equation, can’t tell that it’s _her_ absence making it so easy on Rachel this year. Rachel has a boyfriend, is a senior, primed to graduate and move on, back to New York where she’ll make a killing each night. Quinn knows she can do it.

It’s not right to throw this in her face and screw all of that up. It would be cruel, and Quinn’s honestly had enough of cruel. The name of the game now is apathy, and she’s learning fast to cling to that.

Rachel wants her to come back—or maybe Rachel wants them both to believe that, for the sake of their…what? Not friendship, and certainly not more. Not what Quinn has spent three years lying awake dreaming of. Rachel wants her to come back to appease whatever strange sense of responsibility for Quinn she seems to have fostered, and as _flattering_ as that might be, Quinn’s going to have to desist. There’s no way she’s going back because the girl she wants pities her. No question on that count.

She’s not going back at all. She’s going to keep doing what she’s doing, press through, and maybe the band she’s spent the summer scraping together will magically succeed. Maybe they’ll head to New York, too, or out west. Maybe they’ll skyrocket to the very top of the heap, and by then, it’ll be a new age, a new world, one where pink hair and a nose ring doesn’t mark you as dangerous, where loving a girl doesn’t get you murdered in a parking lot. Maybe she’ll run into Rachel then, a Finn-less Rachel, who has sped through Broadway’s circuit and become all she can be, and who is still climbing. Maybe she’ll be playing a concert some night, feeling sweat bead on her neck as the green-and-red lights beat down, feeling the guitar strings bend and flex under her fingertips, and she’ll look down—and there Rachel will be, beaming that famous smile up at her. Belting along to songs she’s spent hours writing. Adoring her. Maybe she’ll hang around after the show, and Quinn can buy her a drink, and they’ll spend the night catching up…making new memories…making plans…

Maybe.

She coughs out the birth of a sob and rubs it away, clicking the lighter one more time before shoving it brutally into the pocket of her jacket. It’s stupid to think in maybes, to even let herself go there. She knows it won’t play out that way. She knows Rachel will go to New York, absolutely, but that she’ll take Finn with her. They’ll get married while Rachel zips to the top, and Quinn will stay here. Quinn was never _meant_ to go anywhere else. That was never the plan—or, at least, not one worth admitting to anyone but her most desperate self.

In the end, it will be Rachel-and-Finn, in love and making it, and Quinn will be left to find her own way. She will settle with someone, a faceless, ordinary person who will love her more than she deserves, but who will never be enough. She will have the two-point-five kids, the job at some shoddy Ohio office, the misery each night as she recalls what her life could have been _if_. Always that if. Seventeen years old, and there are so many ifs hanging over her head, she can’t begin to tally them all up.

She’s not going back. Not because Rachel asked. Rachel doesn’t have a clue, doesn’t get it in the least, can’t see that this is the best Quinn has ever been. She doesn’t get that the best Quinn can do for Rachel is to stay far, far away, right where she is, and push through this.

She plucks at the bracelet on her wrist, closes her eyes, allows Rachel’s face one more chance to wash through her mind. Those hopeful eyes, that insistent smile, the certainty in her “whenever you’re ready.” A sigh traces along her lips, her hair whispering across her forehead in the light September breeze.

Rachel will come around again. Rachel doesn’t give up that easily. It’s the thing Quinn loves most about her, and thing that will make this unbearably hard.

The Berry house grows tiny behind her as she turns and walks back towards her own, steeling herself. This is going to be a very, very long year. Long, and hard, and stupidly painful.

But it’s the best she can do. And this time, this year, she’s going to take Rachel’s advice for the first time.

This is her year to get it right.  



End file.
